Not all presidents worth celebrating

On Monday, Americans will once again mark Presidents Day -
surely what has to be the most useless holiday on any page of our
calendars.

If nothing else, it makes February the most barren of all
presidential celebratory months.

Of course, it wasn't always such.

Indeed, once upon a time Americans spent February honoring the
birthdays of the nation's two greatest presidents - Abraham Lincoln
(Feb. 12) and George Washington, (Feb. 22).

But all that changed in 1971 when Congress decided to move
Washington's birthday to the third Monday in February as part of a
general reshuffling of American holidays so as to give us more
meaningless three-day weekends.

Congress simply ignored Lincoln's birthday altogether.

Matters got worse when President Richard Nixon proclaimed the
third Monday in February as a federal holiday honoring all former
presidents of the United States.

The irony of Nixon's proclamation became apparent three short
years later when he was forced to resign after the Watergate
scandal. It is only on Presidents Day that anyone would "celebrate"
his tenure as leader of the nation.

And that is the crux of the problem with Presidents Day: Why
should Americans honor some of the most incompetent or ignominious
individuals ever to achieve the highest office in the land?

While there are many presidents I deeply admire, I refuse to
celebrate those who simply did not measure up to the job.

Excluding men like William Henry Harrison and James A. Garfield
whose terms were so brief that they left no presidential legacy -
good or bad - we have had other presidents whose collective lack of
vision, honesty, political adroitness and communication skills is
historically staggering

So, here are 10 presidents whose White House careers I will not
be celebrating Monday:

1. Millard Fillmore (1850-1852): Certainly our
most obscure national leader. For generations, his only claim to
fame was that he had installed the first bathtub in the White
House. However, historians have now burst even that bubbly illusion
of notoriety.

2. Franklin Pierce (1853-1856): A man of so
unimpressive abilities that his own party, the Democrats, passed
him over for renomination in favor of James Buchanan and who left
the White House proclaiming that the only thing left was to go out
and get drunk.

3. James Buchanan (1857-1860): Nominated
because he had never voiced an opinion on slavery, he did nothing
to stop the oncoming Civil War. He left the White House bemoaning,
"I am the last president of the United States."

4. Andrew Johnson (1865-1868): A semi-educated
racist who all but destroyed Lincoln's "better angels of our
nature" reconstruction philosophy and set back race relations a
full century.

5. Ulysses Simpson Grant (1869-1876): An honest
man in a sea of corruption who simply couldn't understand that
political sharks have no morals.

6. Woodrow Wilson (1913-1920): An idealist who
believed his own press clippings and allowed his pride to drive the
nation into two decades of near-disastrous isolationism.

7. Warren G. Harding (1921-1923): A leader who
inadvertently wrote his own political epitaph when asked by Will
Rogers if he had heard any good jokes lately and answered, "Yes,
and I appointed every one of them."

8. Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1968): A man who
could have achieved greatness, but whose own insecurities led a
generation of young Americans into the killing fields of
Vietnam.

9. Richard Nixon (1969-1974): The only
president of whom it rightfully can be said disgraced the
office.

10. Jimmy Carter (1977-1980): A good man whose
own lack of abilities proved once again that the presidency is no
place for on-the-job training.

So, there's the list and that is why on Monday I will reflect on
Washington and Lincoln and wish that President George W. Bush and
all who will follow him prove worthy of the place in history that
the American people have given them.

Chet Diestel is
the Lodi News-Sentinel's city editor. He can be reached at (209)
369-7035; at 125 N. Church St., or via e-mail.